By Chris King
Photograph by Peter Newcomb
Bud Jostes grew up in Omaha, went to college in New Mexico and named his club after a street in Memphis—a somewhat surprising résumé for a man who is emerging as one of the core curators of the St. Louis blues as a living art form.
His club is named Beale on Broadway in an attempt to associate a tiny strip of South Broadway with the historic street in Memphis that has enjoyed a rousing revival as a live-music destination. He renovated his outdoor stage to resemble a rickety front porch in the Mississippi Delta. And, although this might be taking too many geographical liberties to satisfy a purist, when it comes to live blues, Jostes’ heart is very much in St. Louis.
Jostes moved here in March 1989 with his “future ex-wife” to live near his family in West County. He had developed a taste for recorded blues while spinning records as a DJ for his college radio station at New Mexico State University, but it was in the bars of Soulard that he discovered St. Louis musicians such as Tommy Bankhead who were keeping the music alive. Jostes’ response: “Holy cow! There was this real live intensity.” He was hooked.
After booking music for Soulard Ale House for several years, Jostes endeavored to open his own club, where he could control the talent and the atmosphere. By then, after putting in so many long nights in Soulard, he had learned one shortcoming of much live music, blues or otherwise, in St. Louis: “The band is drunk and the bartender is drunk and the crowd is drunk, and they think the music sounds great, but …”
He lucked into an opportunity to snag a long-admired property across thestreet from BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups and just up from the Broadway Oyster Bar. He financed it “on a whisper and a prayer,” filled a 20-yard Dumpster three times with “all the crap in that place,” bought a bunch of discarded lumber from Fehlig Bros. “for pennies on the dollar” and renovated the building with the help of three homeless guys. “Nothing in the place is square,” he says. “Nothing is level—but it’s a joint. Every little imperfection lends to the charm of the place.”
The owner himself has a painful imperfection that lends to his character, perhaps even adding a bit of charm: He wears a black eye patch. This is anything but an affectation. He has a large nonmalignant tumor near that eye. After many surgeries, the eye no longer lubricates itself, doesn’t blink and is easily irritated. “If I keep it covered up, I am much more comfortable,” Jostes says. “Believe me, wearing an eye patch, I hear it all.”
Since it opened in September 2000, you can not “hear it all” at Beale on Broadway—it’s a blues room—though Jostes has widened his format to include touring roots and rockabilly bands like the Star Devils. Even then, he sticks by tradition. “I do rockabilly,” he says, “not punkabilly, drunkabilly, psychomethabilly. In my club, you hear blues how it was meant to be played. You hear roots how it was meant to be played. I will not go outside that programming. I am what I am, and I stick to it. I am trying to keep something alive.”
Beale on Broadway, 701 S. Broadway, 314-621-7880, bealeonbroadway.com.
